The outstanding question is where is the limit, but that will require a few court cases.
The outstanding question is where is the limit, but that will require a few court cases.
The case in question was a PR stunt intended to get the AI recognized as the author in order to build clout for the company that created the AI. “Look, a judge determined that our AI is so advanced that it can be the author of works of art, and is therefore a person.” It’s similar to stunts that try to get courts to recognize god as real or not real.
The fundamental question was not whether the work could be copyrighted or not - only whether the AI could be listed as the author of the work. It would be similar to if I tried to register a copyright with my digital camera listed as the author of the work. A camera is not a person, so it cannot be the author.
This is a landmark case that will be referenced for quite some time and have significant impact on future cases around production with the aid of tools.
I like your analogy on the digital camera, but this is really not limited to this one case. For instance the case of monkey's selfie [0] is quite well known and touches on similar questions. This is obviously not a tool, nor object but it's also not a human.
We will have to find out where the boundaries lie between the tool is an aid and the tool is the source of creativity.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...